Lucy Peng is one of the founders of Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce firm which filed a prospectus for an IPO earlier this month, and is expected to raise more than $15 billion when it goes public later this year. She now runs Alibaba's "Small and Micro Financial Services Group," which is the country's largest online financial service platform. Her group's offerings include online payment system Alipay.

Patricia Harris, 57

Patricia Harris is CEO of Bloomberg Philanthropies, the enormously well-endowed charity run by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. Harris had been Bloomberg's First Deputy Mayor.

Lila Tretikov, 36

Lila Tretikov is executive director of Wikipedia.

Elvira Nabiullina, 50

Elvira Nabiullina is the governor of the Bank of Russia. The former economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin became the first woman to run a central bank of a G8 country last year, before Janet Yellen became chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in the U.S.

Folorunsho Alakija is the first self-made African billionaire, according to Forbes. Worth an estimated $3 billion, she's from Lagos, Nigeria. After finding success with her tailoring company, Supreme Stiches, she eventually became involved in Nigeria's oil industry and now controls Famfa Oil.

Adena Friedman, 44

Adena Friedman was appointed earlier this year as president of global corporate and information technology solutions of Nasdaq OMX Group. She had previously been the chief financial officer of private equity firm Carlyle.